


The Diamonds on Her Soles

by Zabbers



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Other, The Vault (Doctor Who), flashfic, poemfic, vaultfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:07:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27002491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zabbers/pseuds/Zabbers
Summary: Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of HeavenW. B. YeatsHad I the heavens' embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and the half light,I would spread the cloths under your feet:But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Twelfth Doctor/Missy
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10





	The Diamonds on Her Soles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tardisandpastries](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=tardisandpastries).



He’s pining for the stars again. He’s feigning self-containment with his arms crossed, peering into a night sky thickened with the wavering haze of atmosphere as though through the deepest depths of an ocean, as if with a gaze penetrating enough, his sight at least could break the surface, into the light, and pull his spirit with it, hold it, floating, above the water. 

He’s trying not to touch the pane of his office window. Nardole will mutter about the fingerprints, and the Doctor doesn’t think he’s up for that, not right now, not this decade. He doesn’t breathe so as not to fog the glass. 

He thinks about light. Up close, each of those stars is bright and hot and elemental. At this distance, they’re traces of cold precious metals, old threaded tracery, half-hidden in their shifting velvet ground. He thinks about velvet’s sumptuous darkness.

Years ago, he had jewelled the windows in Missy’s cell with starlight. He had transformed a blind wall into the night and cast silver dragées across its thick, soft folds. Realtime data from the TARDIS gave Missy a starscape more vivid than his own. Years ago, she’d cultivated lush vines in the sunlight of the artificial day, and he had thought if she could do that, then she could nurture other living things too. She could learn to value life and regret the loss of it. 

He had tasted her acerbic fruit and swallowed the wine she’d made from it. She had drawn the sky down around him, a heavy curtain, and he had drowsed with her between smooth sheets, drunk with hope and dreaming. But when he woke the vines had shriveled and the bed was bruise-stained, and in his mouth was the glass wool of the astringent residue. 

The light is not so starry now. It hadn’t been meant as punishment, stopping the data stream, but perhaps it had been a retaliation, an instinctual lashing out, habit written into his body by his own history—a gloved hand holding the sharpened quill.

Still, he believes. When the Doctor ventures down into the cellar depths, he’s remembering the way they once dreamt together of flight on time-gilt wings. He’s remembering the threads they’d picked out of their robes and wove together, the beginnings of a future. He’s remembering hope. 

In the vault, Missy has the forcefield on, enclosing herself like a figurine in a glowing display case. She is half in shadow and half alight. The panels of the false windows are milky and dim. Her skin is silver, like the moon. 

She doesn’t move until he deactivates the forcefield. The blue falls away. She’s on her feet, then, the sound of her clothing more a murmur than a whisper. 

“Yes?” she says, coming up to the edge of the platform and standing still. 

“It’s a clear sky tonight, and a new moon.”

His voice is already rough.

Missy lifts her eyes. “And?”

The Doctor knits his brow in annoyance. “And I looked up into space and I wanted to be there.”

Missy steps off the platform. Her bootstep is loud on the exposed floor. 

“What do you want me to do about it?”

The Doctor makes a noise: frustration, incoherence. He wants her to be better so that he can fly. He wants her to sew him shut with silver wire, and let him seam her up in gold. He wants to lay himself down before her feet and spread his coat across her path and mute and muffle the hard report of her soles. 

He wants her to slip into some act that will allow him to care a little less. That will alchemise the perpetual dusk of the vault into something half real, half true, half good: moonlight, starlight, not the searing proximity of a sun. In such light he could hold his breath and touch off the transformation. He could transfix her at the moment of her changing, wrap brightness around the dark, pull its promise into the depths, like a lamp. Like hot heavy fusion doused to boil off the ocean. Shaped by his presence in her. 

“Come to my office, watch the stars with me,” he says. “We can sit on the roof on a picnic blanket; we’ll bring the thermos. I’ll put honey in the tea.”

“Milk and honey?” Missy asks. “How appropriate.”

She steps up to him. Her step is soft. All the way up to the roof, their eyes are shining.


End file.
